


Morning might come by Accident

by greywing (ctrlx)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-12
Updated: 2005-11-12
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctrlx/pseuds/greywing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loss brings two people together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning might come by Accident

  
**Morning might come by Accident**

Their fingers brushed when Hawkeye handed her a steaming cup of coffee. The rich aroma assaulted her senses as Gracia brought the cup up to her lips and warmth spread through her mouth when she took a small sip. It was too strong, but she had expected that. The coffee was always too strong at Central Headquarters.

“You came at a bad time,” the First Lieutenant said apologetically. “The Colonel has a few meetings this morning.”

Gracia shook her head. “That’s fine. I can wait. I just wanted to say hello since I have some free time; Elicia is spending some time with my sister.”

She expected the First Lieutenant to inquire about her sister, but Hawkeye only nodded and smiled. Somehow she wasn’t surprised. Hawkeye didn’t seem like the type to pry.

“Actually, First Lieutenant,” Gracia said quickly, “I was wondering if you would like to have dinner with us.”

“Pardon?” Hawkeye replied promptly, trying unsuccessfully to smother her shock. “I mean, why?”

“Well,” Gracia replied haltingly, “I always cook too much for just me and Elicia and it would be nice to have a guest once in a while…”

But there was a suspiciously knowing look in the First Lieutenant’s eye now and Gracia turned away. She was afraid that the First Lieutenant would say something and just when it seemed like she might, the door suddenly opened. Gracia had never been so happy to see Roy.

*

  
That night, just as it began to rain, the doorbell rang at the Hughes residence. Gracia rushed to the door and, seeing who it was, opened it with a smile.

“First Lieutenant,” she said warmly.

“I’m sorry to drop by unannounced.” Hawkeye paused. “I forgot my umbrella.”

Gracia smiled. “Come in.”

*

  
Dinner was uneventful and would have been strained if it hadn’t been for Elicia’s ebullience and excitement. Gracia spent most of the time gently scolding her daughter for her manners, while Hawkeye smiled and made polite responses to Elicia’s inquiries.

Yet Gracia felt her eyes watching her, filled with an unspoken question. But Hawkeye was patient. She even waited until after Gracia put Elicia to bed.

*

  
“He told you about us.”

It wasn’t a question after all.

Even as the words rang in her ears, Gracia noted that the First Lieutenant had beautiful eyes. Intense, honest eyes. They never strayed from Gracia as she spoke, never flinched though the words fell from her mouth like lead weights, landing between them like a thunderous challenge.

It was Gracia that looked away and fled into the relative safety of playing hostess. How was it that her hands didn’t shake as she poured the coffee into the porcelain cups, admiring the way the liquid swirled into that white expanse and how the steam wafted lazily up in curling breaths? Yet she thought about him, turning these same cups in his hands, admiring the silver designs, and exclaiming at the kindness of their friends.

The entire set had been a wedding present. From Roy. And his men.

And probably chosen by this woman.

Their fingers brushed as Gracia handed her a cup and finally raised her eyes to Hawkeye’s.

“Yes.”

*

  
In the darkness, his heartbeat murmured in her ear like a lullaby, steady and true, but it couldn’t soothe her. Behind her closed eyes a vision played out over and over again, causing her heart to beat a little faster, to constrict just enough to cause her pain.

“That woman…” she said softly.

“Hmm?” was his sleepy reply.

“Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye.”

“Yeah?”

There had been smiles all around the dinner table. In the low lighting and heat of the restaurant, their conversation had flourished in an air of intimacy and maybe a bit too much alcohol so that even the young Lieutenant-Colonel laughed as loud as her husband and the eyes of the Second Lieutenant sparkled like jewels in the candlelight. But during a lull, two pairs of eyes had met. There had been a look. And Gracia had seen it.

“Have you known her long?”

“Almost since she’s been with Roy—since Ishvar. That’s where we first met.”

“…Did you love her?”

He didn’t react at all. His heart never skipped a beat, his breathing never hitched, his fingers did not stop combing through her hair.

Maybe she had been wrong.

But then he said, “It feels like a long time ago. Now I have you, thank God.” His lips pressed against the crown of her head.

For just a moment, she hated her husband and his honesty. Then she wondered what kind of woman could give him up.

*

  
“Did you love him?”

It shocked Gracia how little defensiveness or indignation the other woman showed. Rather, the First Lieutenant merely leaned back into the couch, shoulders back and open, her face expressionless.

She looked tired. Around her eyes and her lips. The way she seemed to sink into the cushions.

“He is… was… a hard man not to love.”

A smile stole briefly across those lips. A sad smile. Maybe a little sardonic. Almost apologetic.

“Why did you…?” Gracia said and then trailed off.

One blond eyebrow lifted in question, but Gracia couldn’t finish. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to ask.

*

  
She studied the photograph for a long time. The woman’s smile was full of life, cheer and happiness. She could practically taste it and suddenly she was jealous of this woman she had never met, who could smile like that, who could communicate such feelings so freely.

She wondered if she’d ever smiled at someone like that. She wondered if she could.

“She’s beautiful, Hughes.”

He leaned back and spread his arms across the back of the chair, raising his chin to the sun to catch its warmth. He was smiling. He always seemed to smile and somehow it always seemed genuine.

“You are, too, you know,” he said by way of an answer. Her gaze darted to him, so shocked she didn’t even blush. “I know it, he knows it, the whole world knows it.” He turned his smile on her, the tamer one that didn’t seem to laugh but rather confided and empathized. But she couldn’t see his eyes, hidden behind his glasses. “It would be a pity if it went to waste.”

He was only half-kidding. But as Hawkeye looked again at the photograph in her hands, she knew she had been completely honest with him.

Gracia was beautiful.

And, in so many ways she could see just by looking at her picture, so unlike her.

When Hawkeye smiled, it was but the shadow of her former innocence, as if the sands of Ishvar had long ago eroded away the expression.

*

  
“He loved you a great deal,” Hawkeye said.

“I know,” Gracia said softly, blinking away the tears. “But sometimes I wonder…”

There was a pause and then Hawkeye whispered, “What?”

But Gracia could only shake her head.

*

  
She wasn’t blind. She noticed how her husband always seemed to brighten around Roy Mustang or how he always seemed concerned for his friend or how often Roy would come up in their conversations. She even noticed how the Second Lieutenant, later the First Lieutenant, would hover protectively around her commander and how her gaze could linger on his back or on his face and how at those times Hawkeye looked not like a subordinate, but like a woman longing for a man.

Gracia liked Roy Mustang, so she accepted that he was a singular man with a magnetic personality. She accepted his presence in her own life, however indirect or peripheral.

But she never understood how he commanded such love. She never understood how these two people could devote so much to him. And she never understood quite how she fit into this strange tableau, if the triangle was really a square or if she was just a random tangent, touching only where Maes existed.

Then there was that infinitesimal part of her that was afraid that somehow she, too, might fall in love with this man. Then where would that leave all of them?

*

  
They sat in silence. A clock sitting on the mantel ticked loudly and the rain beat gently against the windows. The two women did not look at each other. They had run out of ways to say things they couldn’t say.

“I should go,” Hawkeye said, standing up and straightening her uniform. “Thank you for dinner.”

Gracia watched her in helpless silence as she gathered up her coat and headed towards the door. She wanted to say something—apologize—to dispel the sudden awkwardness. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. She didn’t know what she had meant. She’d just wanted to… to…

Then she saw Hawkeye by the door, her back to her, that blue-uniformed back, and her heart stopped and her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly she was across the room, hugging Hawkeye from behind, clutching her tightly, and whispering hoarsely, “Don’t go.”

But when Hawkeye said “Gracia…” and covered her hand with a callused one, Gracia’s heart broke. She let her go and Hawkeye left without another word.

Only when she had locked the door did Gracia collapse against the door, trying to recapture the warmth of her husband, trying not to wonder how Hawkeye had experienced that same warmth.

*

  
“It’s different with her,” he told her once. “It’s quiet and peaceful. I don’t worry. I mean I do, just not for the same reasons, you know?” He laughed. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

She had only looked at him, almost wonderingly. “You really love her.”

He played with that odd strand of hair that he never seemed to be able to tame. “Yeah, I do.”

“What’s it like,” she asked to her own surprise, “to know that you’ll spend the rest of your life with her?”

He grinned. “Wonderful.”

It surprised Hawkeye that she could feel both envious and glad for him. Or that she wondered what it might have been like for them.

*

  
The doorbell rang an hour later.

“He loved you,” Hawkeye said when Gracia opened the door and then kissed her. And Gracia kissed her back, feeling the ache in her heart, and a flutter in her stomach.

The First Lieutenant tasted faintly of coffee and smelled like rain, shampoo, starch, and a hint of something else—gunpowder, maybe—that Gracia didn’t know. In fact, she didn’t know what was happening, what she was doing with this woman dripping with rainwater, whose flesh burned against hers, whose callused hands cupped her chin gently.

And, somewhere, somehow, here was a bit of her husband.

“Stay,” Gracia whispered.

“Yes,” Hawkeye gasped and kissed her again.

*

  
Hawkeye wasn’t a stranger to a woman’s body. And Gracia was beautiful. From her short hair that flowed through her fingers and tickled her nose when she nuzzled her neck, to her little fleshy earlobes that elicited a moan when she nibbled on them, to her soft lips that tremblingly kissed her back, to her full breasts that filled her hands, to the little stretch marks on her stomach that Hawkeye traced with her fingers.

Beautiful, just like she’d told Hughes.

But with every kiss, every touch, every caress, guilt gnawed at Hawkeye’s heart. Because her hands were dirty, because she was dirty, stained by war and death and madness. Because she shouldn’t be there. Because she shouldn’t be doing this. Because she enjoyed it.

But his hands had been dirty, too, her abused conscience whispered. He had had hands like hers, hands that had held her close and traced the length of her spine, hands that had splayed across her middle and had drawn her down, to him, to the light that was his presence, to the comfort that had been his strength.

His hands had been dirty too.

*

  
Was this how it had been between them? Was this how she had touched him? Was this how she had sighed in his ear?

But, no, it couldn’t have been, Gracia thought dazedly. Not like this. Not with these gentle, callused hands that seemed to know her body better than she did. Not with those touches there and there and there that only another woman might guess at. Not with these lips that were so strangely soft and this darting, inquiring tongue that wrestled and teased. Not with hair this long that trailed over her face, her shoulder, her stomach, her thighs, like butterfly caresses that made her shiver and gasp.

“Hughes,” Hawkeye whispered and gasped as she kissed the hollow of Gracia’s throat, “I always called him Hughes.”

Hughes, Gracia thought dizzily, tangling her fingers into Hawkeye’s hair, I’m Hughes, too.

*

  
What were they doing?

What were they doing?

God, it didn’t matter.

She made the pain go away.

She made the tears flow from her eyes.

Gracia was crying and she couldn’t say why, but Hawkeye kissed her tears away, brushed them away with the back of her hand, whispered her name in her ear.

“Gracia… Gracia… it’s alright… it’s okay… Gracia…”

*

  
And when it was over, when they both lay exhausted, Hawkeye smiled at her. Unconsciously. Faintly. With her quiet strength. With her somber and sad eyes.

And Gracia understood how her husband had wanted this woman, why he had loved her, and that he hadn’t left her, or she him, but that they had let each other go.

“Thank you,” Gracia whispered and smiled back. It was only a little sad.

*

  
Hawkeye dressed in the dark, quietly and unhurriedly, and Gracia watched unnoticed. It was strange, watching her put on the uniform just as she had watched Maes do so many other times or to note how this back was so different in the slope of the shoulders and the fall of the blond hair.

Because it wasn’t Maes.

Because it was Hawkeye.

Because it was Hawkeye that had held her.

Because it was Hawkeye that was leaving.

Because it was Hawkeye, not Maes, that Gracia had found.

And when Hawkeye lightly squeezed her hand before leaving, Gracia closed her eyes to keep the tears at bay.

Their fingers brushed when Hawkeye pulled away.

 

FIN

>   Morning  
>  might come  
>  by Accident—  
>  Sister—  
>  Night comes  
>  by Event—  
>  To believe the  
>  final line of  
>  the Card would  
>  foreclose Faith—  
>  Faith is _Doubt_ —
> 
>       Sister—  
>  Show me  
>  Eternity—and  
>  I will show  
>  you Memory—  
>  Both in one  
>  package lain  
>  And lifted  
>  back again—
> 
> Be Sue—while  
>  I am Emily—  
>  Be next—what  
>  you have ever  
>  been—Infinity—
> 
> -Emily Dickinson, Letter 912, to Susan Gilbert Dickinson

**Author's Note:**

> I could blame this on [](http://daringu.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://daringu.livejournal.com/)**daringu** and she does deserve some blame, but I have been wanting to write a Hawkeye/Gracia fic ever since I read a Roy/Gracia fic set post-Hughes' death that hooked the two up through the Hughes connection. So why couldn't I do it with Hawkeye and Gracia?
> 
> Well, obviously because then you get a crap fanfic like this. Definitely not how I wanted it to be done and I still don't think I managed to get them into bed in any logical fashion at all. It's a very far leap and I'm asking you to attempt it on faith and go with me. Sorry. It did seem very nice in my head but, as usual, I completely failed in the conception --> execution aspect. AUGH!
> 
> This fic was written listening to Sara McLachlan's _Solace_ album, the ending themes of episode 1-3 of Mushishi, some of the Fantastic Children OSt, and some other random songs along the way. I always forget to mention what I listen to when I write, which is not a good thing since music has a powerful effect on me.


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